


A Day in the Life

by Xenafox



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Fun, M/M, daily life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3665232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenafox/pseuds/Xenafox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fanfic for the 4rth Anniversary of Tiger and Bunny!</p><p>A look at a day in the life of these two heroes. A standard day with its ups, downs, and someone make an ass of himself as usual.</p><p>It’s not always glamorous and fun, being a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Life

Kotetsu had to force himself to roll out of his bed. He’d gone to bed so late, waaaay too late and he was behind in his waking up schedule – which was not unusual. Barnaby would lecture him. He might even be mad. And Kotetsu would fight it and argue back with him and eventually they’d tire themselves out on the arguing and it’d be over with. 

That is, it might be over with for an hour or so until they found their next thing to get worked up about. 

Thinking about that made Kotetsu take a while getting ready. He didn’t always have the heart for arguing even though it was rarely ever serious at all. He took forever in the shower, he started his coffee later than he should have, and started to watch TV. 

That’s when his name was yelled from the doorway and he startled badly. “Sorry Bunny, didn’t know you were there!” he claimed, jumping up and facing his pissed off partner. 

“You really have to stop doing that thing where you wake up late and pretend not to see me the whole morning because you don’t want to deal with being called out on staying up too late.” Barnaby crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. 

“I was sleep-blind. Needed to wake up more.”

Barnaby rolled his eyes, opened the door, and started walking as Kotetsu rushed to put on his shoes. “I suppose it’s a better story than the time you said you knew I was really a ghost.”

With a suppressed chuckle, Kotetsu hurried himself up. Yea, that ghost bit had been a good one. A really good one until Barnaby ignored him back and didn’t share breakfast. 

The ride to work was mostly quiet. Kotetsu turned up the radio. Barnaby turned it down. Kotetsu rolled down the window and received no complaints until he yelled to someone about their great hat. Then Barnaby told him to roll up the window and they argued some more. 

They got to the office, walked in late, and as usual no one reeeaally cared. Sometimes if Lloyds was feeling like busting nuts due to a bad mood he would yell at them – well, really just Kotetsu – for being late. But generally they got in, did their thing, and as long as they weren’t late for anything like an interview or other scheduled publicity stunt it was okay. 

Luckily nothing was scheduled when they got there. So they got to sit down at their computers and get down to business, or the lack of. Kotetsu sometimes wasn’t even sure why they had an office. Couldn’t they do paperwork at home and just come in for things like the gym, suit work, and meetings? He didn’t see the point of even being there. 

Barnaby was even leaning back in his chair, bored out of his skull. 

“Nothin’ to do?” Kotetsu asked. He pulled a sheet of paper toward himself. He was behind in work as usual, but just a little bit. He only had a few signatures to lay down. Calls had been a little light lately. Maybe the arrival of spring put people in a better mood or people were too out of shape from stuffing themselves in the winter to commit crimes big enough to warrant heroes. 

“Nope.” Barnaby leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. 

“No paperwork?”

“No.”

“Did you check on the latest work on your suit?” 

“Yesterday. You were there.”

“Oh yea…do you want to go to the gym?”

“Not right now.”

“Yea, same…” Kotetsu leaned forward over some contract about an outfit he was promoting in a magazine. It was a hideous outfit but he didn’t really care if anyone associated him with it. 

For the first time he wished he had more paperwork. He wasn’t a big fan of being bored. Sure, he liked to slack off! But there was a difference between being bored and putting off things he didn’t want to do. Maybe they could take an early lunch. But they had just gotten there. 

“Hmmm. Make out in the bathroom?” Kotetsu asked, winking. 

“Ugh.” Yea, he never said yes to that one. Barnaby was too classy or something like that. 

“Go on patrol?”

Barnaby stared at his hand as if it were the most fascinating thing on the planet, and then let it fall to his lap. “You know what? Yes. Let’s go do that.”

And half an hour later, they were on the road, in their suits and seated comfortably on the double chaser. As usual Kotetsu was denied the chance to drive. But he was okay with that. He could just lean back, take in the sights, and see if anything was going down. Barnaby brought them down to the lower levels to start. Things were always going down there!

Being on patrol was technically something they should do after hours, whatever that even meant anymore. They were always on call. But Lloyds hadn’t argued with them when they said they were going. He just told them to keep their call bands on. 

Like they EVER turned them off! 

“There! Oh there is definitely something going down there!” Kotetsu yelled and pointed as he suddenly spotted a man and a woman yelling at each other and doing dramatic things with their hands. The woman was holding something big and square. The man shot a puff of pink smoke from his fingers. They were standing outside a big brown building with some other people around just sort of watching. That pink smoke…

Oh God was it poison!?

They pulled up to see them more clearly, a man with long black hair and piercings and a woman with a huge green mohawk. Kotetsu approved. 

The pair jumped at the sight of the heroes. “Everything okay here?” Barnaby asked carefully. 

“Ye-yes sir!” The man said and for some strange reason saluted them both. “It’s all good sir!”

“What’re you folks up to?” Kotetsu asked, and the woman answered him. 

“We’re rehearsing lines from Punkverse Romeo and Juliet! Show starts in two days….” She explained. Kotetsu realized that she was holding a script. 

“Oh…” He felt embarrassed and could feel the sheer annoyance from Barnaby. “Well uh carry on!”

“If you’d like complimentary tickets, we would be honored to have you attend.” The man started fishing around in his pocket. 

“No that’s fine! You don’t have to do that – no, really, you don’t-“

“We’d love it if you mention our little production in front of the cameras!” The woman said, looking excited. 

Two minutes later, they left with two tickets to a show Kotetsu knew he had to attend or he’d feel bad. He’d get drunk before going, but Barnaby would kill him. Greeeaaaat. 

“Hey, hey, there’s something!” he said, pointing frantically again. 

Barnaby yelled at him for a solid five minutes for making him stop for a man in costume advertising delicious chicken ‘n taters. In Kotetsu’s defense, he argued the thing was creepy and he really had thought it was a transformed NEXT preying on children. How did he know they were just having fun with the mascot? 

So as they ascended to the next level of the city to continue their patrol, Kotetsu kept his eyes peeled. He really tried. The last thing he wanted to do was pick another nothing scene and piss off his already annoyed partner.

That was when he thought he heard a scream while they were at a red light. A really loud scream. “Did you hear that?” Kotetsu asked Barnaby. He received a nod from his partner who immediately ran the red light to take off in the direction of the scream. There were a lot of honks from angry drivers. “Er Bunny…”

It was no use saying anything to him. Barnaby was normally more careful, but he was restless and when Barnaby was restless, Kotetsu had to be wary. But if he got to do something heroic, he’d be fine the rest of the day. 

It was just after lunchtime, too, so one they got done with whatever situation was ahead they could get something to eat. 

They came across a woman outside of a clothing store surrounded by a concerned crowd. As soon as they pulled up people started to sigh in relief and point at them and some began to wander away. The woman ran to their chaser and pointed down the street. “My purse and my bags! He stole them! Dirty NEXT he stole th-oh.”

Barnaby ignored the insult. They were used to the prejudice. “What exactly did he do miss?”

“HE TURNED INTO A TORNADO!!!”

That was when the call came in. A NEXT, a highly wanted criminal, had turned into a tornado and was ripping through a nearby park – benches and trash were everywhere! Kotetsu assured Lloyds they were on the scene and handling it. 

But of course, other heroes were deployed. Oh yea, points. As they rushed along on the chaser toward the park, Kotetsu did some of his usual stewing on points on the way there. Why should rescuing lives come down to points? Why did NEXTs have to ‘earn’ their keep by earning points on a show? …And why did he have to have so few? It was depressing and bothered him, but he didn’t have time to dwell once they got to the scene. 

To be fair, he wasn’t a large tornado. He was the size of a van, but man was he whirring around fast! It was hard to catch up to him. He wanted to use his power, but Barnaby forbid it. 

That, of course, meant he activated it. And ran for the tornado, barely stopping as a huge blast of flame nearly scorched him. Fire Emblem on the scene! He had effectively created…a fire tornado. 

“Nope nope nope!” Suddenly, rushing into that thing and grabbing ahold of the problem to make him stop spinning didn’t seem like a good idea. Unfortunately, the fire made the situation even worse. There were long scorch marks on the ground as the tornado stormed on through and Kotetsu hoped nothing large would catch fire. 

Then came the ice with Blue Rose and the tornado froze! Briefly. Then it broke free. No fire, no ice, and going right for a beautiful fountain mounted with angels and fish, which Kotetsu always found a little weird. Kotetsu RUSHED in, he had time, he had time!

He had exactly enough time to try to jump in, fail, get whirled in a circle and then rocketed a few blocks away by the force of the spins. He landed in a painful pile on the hood of some dumpy red car. Well, at least that thing probably wasn’t worth much, and no one was in it. And he wasn’t hurt…too much. 

He was limping back to the scene when Barnaby pulled up. “Kotetsu! Really!? I said not to do it! Why’d you do that? Why do you always do that!?”

Kotetsu pulled himself onto his chaser. “Why are you always surprised? And…what’s that music?” he asked as he suddenly heard a very loud tune and some cheering.

“Blue Rose is giving a concert in the park.”

“Oh. So what happened?”

“Sky High made the arrest,” was all Barnaby said. Kotetsu didn’t ask for details. It would depress Barnaby way too much. 

They rode back to Apollon then, to get a nice lecture from Lloyds. “We don’t hire heroes to be circus attractions!” he was yelling at Kotetsu, while Barnaby stood there. When Kotetsu did good, Barnaby stood up for him. When he did bad, Barnaby did that thing he was doing right that moment where he stood silently and made eye contact with the window behind Lloyds’s desk. 

Kotetsu would have fines for that car, and luckily, nothing else. But it still wasn’t good. 

At least the paperwork wouldn’t be ready to deal with until the following day… 

Barnaby was feeling too pissed to go to the gym. He wanted to get rid of his anger, but Kotetsu knew he didn’t want to deal with the other heroes being there and especially with Sky High. It wasn’t that he was jealous about the points. Sometimes, Barnaby just didn’t want to deal when they failed against the other heroes. 

And frankly, Kotetsu didn’t want to work out either. He felt what was an all too common mixture of shame and annoyance. He hated it when he messed up. And he hated it when it he was given shit for trying. Wasn’t it enough that he was kind of an uncool and outdated hero? He had his own problems. He caused most of them himself, too. 

For the rest of the day, they both messed around on their computers. Barnaby went back to reviewing the files on Ouroboros that he had read so, so many times. He looked at those too often and worked himself into a sad mood since he couldn’t figure out any more leads regarding the crime syndicate. Kotetsu didn’t know why it mattered anymore since Maverick was the murderer. 

Kotetsu decided to review some of Legend’s old arrests. Regardless of what the man had become, Kotetsu still liked to look at his details to stay upbeat. It was soothing, and made him feel hopeful sometimes. 

He got them both sandwiches for a late lunch, and that was the only real highlight. 

Finally it was time to leave and he was relieved. He didn’t know what they would do, go straight home or go out for a drink, but he was happy. “Well Bunny, time to go home!” he said, standing and stretching.

“YOU can go home. I think I might go look at the lamp store. I find we need a change in the bedroom.”

Oh Barnaby and his interior lighting issues. Kotetsu found it bizarre, but adorable. “Okay, I’ll come with!”

“I’m not sure I trust you in a lamp store, today.”

Kotetsu narrowed his eyes, scratched his beard, and was ready to launch into one hell of an insult as soon as he figured one out. 

Then their call bands went off. 

 

It was near nine that night when they both stumbled in the door, dirty and a little scraped up. Kotetsu had bruises on his arms and legs, and Barnaby’s hair had become a different animal entirely. It was a little scary. 

“I never thought that kid would make it as a hero. I definitely didn’t see him becoming a villain, though.” Kotetsu bent down to take off his shoes, his tired body protesting every single movement. It hurt. 

Barnaby groaned as he removed his white boots. “People teased him for having that hair power…I guess you really never know. By the way, why did he go easier on you?”

“One time I told him he had a great smile.” Kotetsu laughed a little. It was a ridiculous world they lived in. As soon as his shoes were off he stumbled toward the bathroom. He was tired. He was hungry. Both of them were. But they were filthy and needed to shower. 

Barnaby joined him, tiredly stripping in the bathroom and neatly placing his clothes in the hamper. Kotetsu had left his clothes in a trail leading to the bathroom and to his surprise, Barnaby didn’t say a thing. He had to be exhausted. When he stepped in the shower, Kotetsu volunteered to wash his hair and scrub him down. Barnaby just stood there and allowed it. 

Once they were clean and acceptable, Barnaby went to lay on the bed while Kotetsu microwaved some leftovers. Barnaby used to despise leftovers, but enough late nights had made him a fan. The poor blonde probably barely had enough energy to eat. Normally he wouldn’t eat in the bed at all, but Kotetsu knew it was all he could do to stay upright as they made their way home. 

He didn’t know how he was functioning. He was just happy he could so he could get them food. He had reached the point where he wanted to make it up to Barnaby. He really had been a chore all day for his partner. 

By the time Kotetsu brought the hot food into the bedroom, Barnaby was completely passed out. He had rolled on his side, snuggled a pillow against his face, and gone to sleep. “Bunny,” Kotetsu whispered. Then he said it louder and touched his shoulder. “Bunny!”

But Barnaby stayed asleep, looking peaceful and sweet. He wasn’t going to be waking up anytime soon. Kotetsu sighed and set one plate on top of the dresser. He was too lazy to go back to the kitchen. He sat on the edge of the bed and ate his own food in quiet contemplation. Maybe he should bring a book or a puzzle to work instead of suggesting patrol when he was bored. He didn’t enjoy stressing out Barnaby or looking like an idiot. 

When he was done eating, he set his plate on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Then he slipped under the blankets. He gazed at Barnaby, who hadn’t moved. He would have liked more time to spend with him after work. But the moment he had with him was okay. He liked seeing Barnaby look so calm in his sleep. 

Kotetsu leaned in and kissed his cheek and then his forehead. “Love you, Bunny,” he told him and smiled. Then he laid back, letting his head sink into the pillow. He’d left the bedroom light on…oh well. 

At least he was getting to bed at a decent time that night despite the call. He really needed the sleep. After all, he had to get up and go through it all again starting the next morning. 

And really, he was okay with that.


End file.
